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Symptoms of Food Intolerance
Food
intolerance can cause a surprisingly wide variety of symptoms. However certain features
concerning the timing and occurrence of symptoms are helpful when trying to identify possible
causes.
The time relationship between
eating the food and getting symptoms depends on many factors.
After four or more days of deliberate and scrupulous avoidance of the food, symptom
onset ranges from almost immediately after eating the food to several hours.
However time relationships are quite different when the food is being consumed
regularly and has not been excluded. For
example, if a troublesome food has been avoided for a number of days and is then eaten again
there may be a brisk and clear-cut symptom response lasting a day or so.
If however a further amount is eaten a day or so later (once the effects of eating the
earlier amount have worn off) there may be no noticeable reaction.
This is described as masking, a kind of immunity that may be caused by the fact that
some of the troublesome food has not been fully eliminated from the bowel.
In food intolerance a very much
wider range of symptoms occurs than in the case of food allergy and multiple symptoms are
usual. The conditions listed have been shown by high quality scientific trials to be either
caused or made worse by food intolerance.
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Respiratory
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Asthma,
rhinitis (nasal allergy), glue ear
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Gastrointestinal
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Infantile
colitis and colic, Crohn's disease, Recurrent abdominal pain (especially in
children), diarrhoea and constipation, Irritable bowel syndrome
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Skin
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Eczema,
urticaria
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Nervous system
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Headache
and migraine, hyperactivity
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Heart / circulation
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Palpitations
(heart rhythm abnormalities)
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Musculoskeletal
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Unexplained
joint pain, some kinds of arthritis, unexplained muscle pain
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Psychiatric
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'Somatisation
Disorder'
Fatigue and hypersomnia (an inappropriate need for sleep)
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These conditions are shown
linked to particular organ systems (gastrointestinal, central nervous, cardiovascular, etc.)
thus conforming to medical convention. However in
practice, when food intolerance is involved, such conditions rarely exist alone; the typical
sufferer having symptoms relating to a number of different organ systems.
For example, a typical food intolerance sufferer may suffer migraine, unexplained
fatigue (central nervous system symptoms) abdominal pain, bloating, frequent diarrhoea
(gastrointestinal system symptoms) unexplained muscle and joint pains (musculoskeletal system
symptoms).
Doctors use the term
somatisation disorder to explain the patient with a wide range of apparently unrelated
symptoms who has no abnormal pathological tests. The
term implies an illness is that is psychosomatic caused by psychological distress manifesting
itself through the soma (body) as opposed to through the psyche (mind).
There is, of course, no doubt
that psychological mechanisms frequently produce bodily symptoms and that some illnesses are
genuinely psychosomatic. However there is
also strong evidence that some of the symptoms of somatisation disorder may be the symptoms of
allergic responses that are beyond the understanding of immunology, as we know it, responses
which are capable of producing both bodily and mental symptoms.
Worsening or precipitation of
symptoms may result from the deliberate or accidental avoidance of the culprit food. In this
situation, reaction to the food often occurs when it is omitted from the diet, a kind of
withdrawal effect. This can explain why a
migraine sufferer may find that missing breakfast is unwise as a migraine invariably follows.
Very careful elimination and challenge testing of that patient's regular breakfast
foods then usually identifies the culprit food, for example milk, wheat or corn.
This is the basis for the
elimination diet that is necessary to confirm the existence of the condition.
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Allergy Clinic
